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Monday, February 10, 2003 Beyond DNA Most of us have probably heard philosopher Robert Nozick’s “experience machine” question before, perhaps in simplified form. In his own words: Suppose there were an experience machine that would give you any experience you desired. Superduper neuropsychologists could stimulate your brain so that you would think and feel you were writing a great novel, or making a friend, or reading an interesting book. All the time you would be floating in a tank, with electrodes attached to your brain. Should you plug into this machine for life, preprogramming your life's desires?... Of course, while in the tank you won't know that you're there; you'll think it's all actually happening. Others can also plug in to have the experiences they want, so there's no need to stay unplugged to serve them. (Ignore problems such as who will service the machines if everyone plugs in.) Would you plug in? What else can matter to us, other than how our lives feel from the inside? Most people, given the option, would choose to forgo the machine and live life with all of its trials and joys; the majority of us want to live through reality, not just a pleasant simulation. Nozick argues that we not only want the experience of certain things but the reality of actually doing them, that we value becoming a certain kind of person rather than just imagining. We do not want to be deceived. But why? Why do we have the desire for reality? It’s the harder road, but most of us would take it with little hesitation. At the base of this preference for reality is a yearning for truth. But where does this come from? A Christian, believing that we are all made imago Dei, in the image of God, would say that we have this longing because God is Truth. If that view were to be discounted, I could not formulate a reasonable explanation for the human hunger for truth, not to say that one does not exist but rather that this craving seems to point to something more, something that cannot be explained merely in terms of molecules and DNA. And even that DNA is fearfully, wonderfully made. My dad is undergoing surgery today; he's getting a kidney transplant. For the last few weeks he's been on dialysis. It takes a large machine, 12 doctors, various drugs, and a carefully monitored diet (in other words, most foods are off-limits) to restore just 3% of his kidney function. Three percent. It's a miracle of medical science, the result of decades of thoughtful work. And we have the arrogance to presume that millions of years of random mutations--the equivalent of experiments performed by multitudes of uncoordinated people--could produce a coherent, complicated program (the DNA code that tells your cells what to do) and similar product (the kidney itself) that can do what researchers have spent years working toward and still cannot begin to rival? Not to mention that the kidney is only a tiny part of a larger, unfathomably complicated organism that medical science still cannot understand, for example the reaction of a patient to various drugs, which is more like educated guesswork than a certainty, or how the brain really functions, which we've barely grasped. We recognize the machine immediately as man's creation. We consider the body the result of years of mutation. As my father would say, it's logically inconsistent. ^ Top | 2:40 AM | | | 
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